"And then?"
"Then youll take a nice long shower, youll shave, put on some decent clothes. And then well eat. And then-what would you like to do?"
"Thats just what I dont know. I remember everything thats happened since my reawakening, I know all about Julius Caesar, but I cant imagine what comes next. Until this morning I wasnt worried about any next-only about the before that I wasnt able to remember. But now that were going somewhere, I see fog ahead of me, too, not just behind me. No, it isnt fog ahead-its as if my legs were slack and I couldnt walk. Its like jumping."
"Jumping?"
"Yes, to jump you have to make a leap forward, but to do that you have to get a running start, so you have to back up first. If you dont back up, you wont go forward. So I have the feeling that in order to say what Ill do next, I need to know a lot about what I did before. You get ready to do a thing by changing something that was there before. Now, if you tell me I need to shave, I can see why: I rub my hand over my chin, it feels bristly, I should get rid of this hair. Its the same if you tell me I should eat, I recall that the last time I ate was last night, broth, prosciutto, and stewed pear. But its one thing to say Ill shave or Ill eat, and something else to say what Ill do next, in the long run, I mean. I cant grasp what the long run means, because Im missing the long run that was there before. Does that make sense?"
"Youre saying you no longer live in time. We are the time we live in. You used to love Augustines passages about time. He was the most intelligent man who ever lived, you always said. We psychologists can learn a lot from him still. We live in the three moments of expectation, attention, and memory, and none of them can exist without the others. You cant stretch toward the future because youve lost your past. And knowing what Julius Caesar did doesnt help you figure out what you yourself should do."
Paola saw my jaw tightening and changed the subject. "Do you recognize Milan?"
"Never seen it before." But when the road widened I said: "Castello Sforzesco. And then the Duomo. And the Last Supper, and the Brera Art Gallery."
"And Venice?"
"In Venice theres the Grand Canal, the Rialto bridge, San Marco, the gondolas. I know whats in the guide books. It may be that Ive never been to Venice and have lived in Milan for thirty years, but for me Milans the same as Venice. Or Vienna: the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the third man. Harry Lime up on that Ferris wheel at the Prater saying the Swiss invented cuckoo clocks. He lied: Cuckoo clocks are Bavarian."
We got home and went inside. A lovely apartment, with balconies overlooking the park. I really saw an expanse of trees. Nature is as beautiful as they say. Antique furniture-apparently I am well-off. I do not know how to get around, where the living room is, or the kitchen. Paola introduces me to Anita, the Peruvian woman who helps around the house. The poor thing does not know whether to celebrate my return or greet me like a visitor. She runs back and forth, shows me the door to the bathroom, keeps saying, "Pobrecito el Seor Yam bo , ay Jesusmara, here are the clean towels, Signor Yambo."
After the commotion of my departure from the hospital, my first encounter with the sun, and the trip home, I felt sweaty. I decided to sniff my armpits: the odor of my sweat did not bother me-I do not think it was very strong-but it made me feel like a living animal. Three days before returning to Paris, Napoleon sent a message to Josephine telling her not to wash. Did I ever wash before making love? I do not dare ask Paola, and who knows, maybe I did with her and did not with other women-or vice versa. I had myself a good shower, soaped my face and shaved slowly, found some aftershave with a light, fresh scent, and combed my hair. I look more civil already. Paola showed me my wardrobe: apparently I like corduroy pants, slightly coarse jackets, wool ties in pale colors (pea green, emerald, chartreuse? I know the names, but not how to apply them yet), checkered shirts. It seems I also have a dark suit for weddings and funerals. "Just as handsome as before," Paola said, when I had put on something casual.
She led me down a long hallway lined with shelves full of books. I looked at the spines and recognized most of them. That is to say I recognized the titles-The Betrothed, Orlando Furioso, The Catcher in the Rye. For the first time, I had the impression of being in a place where I felt at ease. I pulled a volume from the shelf, but even before looking at the cover I held the back of it in my right hand and with my left thumb flipped quickly through the pages in reverse. I liked the noise, did it several times, then asked Paola whether I should see a soccer player kicking a ball. She laughed; apparently there were little books that made the rounds when we were children, a kind of poor mans movie, where the soccer player changed position on each page, so that if you flipped the pages rapidly you saw him move. I made sure that this was something everyone knew: I thought as much, it was not a memory, just a notion.
The book was Pre Goriot, Balzac. Without opening it I said: "Goriot sacrificed himself for his daughters. One was named Delphine, I think. Along come Vautrin alias Collin and the ambitious Rastignac- just the two of us now, Paris. Did I read much?"
"Youre a tireless reader. With an iron memory. You know stacks of poems by heart."
"Did I write?"
"Nothing of your own. Im a sterile genius, you used to say; in this world you either read or write, and writers write out of contempt for their colleagues, out of a desire to have something good to read once in a while."
"I have so many books. Sorry, we do."
"Five thousand here. And theres always some imbecile who comes over and says, my how many books you have, have you read them all?"
"And what do I say?"
"Usually you say: Not one, why else would I be keeping them here? Do you by chance keep the tins of meat after youve emptied them? As for the five thousand Ive already read, I gave them away to prisons and hospitals. And the imbecile reels."
"I see a lot of foreign books. I think I know several languages." Verses came to me unbidden: "Le brouillard indolent de lautomne est pars Unreal city, / under the brown fog of a winter dawn, / a crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had undone so many Sptherbstnebel, kalte Trume, / berfloren Berg und Tal, / Sturm entblttert schon die Bume, / und sie schaun gespenstig kahl Mas el doctor no saba," I concluded, "que hoy es siempre todava "
"Thats curious, out of four poems, three are about fog."
"You know, I feel surrounded by fog. Its just that I cant see it. I know how others have seen it: At a turn, an ephemeral sun brightens: a duster of mimosas in the pure white fog."
"You were fascinated by fog. You used to say you were born in it. For years now, whenever you came across a description of fog in a book you made a note in the margin. Then one by one you had the pages photocopied at your studio. I think youll find your fog dossier there. And in any case, all you have to do is wait: the fog will be back. Though its no longer what it used to be-theres too much light in Milan, too many shop windows lit up even at night; the fog slips away along the walls."
"The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes, the yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes, licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, curled once about the house and fell asleep."